Abstract

Friday, December 4, 2015

A healthy skepticism

Last week
my cousin Jackie, a retired schoolteacher, mailed me a copy of Life Extension magazine. The publication
targets the Baby Boom generation, of which I am nominally a part. (Like Douglas
Coupland, the Vancouver writer who coined the term Generation X, I was born in
1961.) Jackie, who noted that she receives Life
Extension because her education association sends it to her, highlighted
two articles, one about walnuts, the other about benfotiamine, a B1 vitamin.
Under the magazine’s monthly feature “Super Foods,” walnuts are touted not just
for reducing the risk of heart disease and some forms of cancer, but also for boosting
cognitive function. According to the article, walnuts can limit vulnerability
to “oxidative stress”—defined as an imbalance in the body’s ability to detoxify
or repair cellular damage.

The article notes that in a study involving young and old
rats, researchers concluded that eating walnuts regularly may confer
“protective effects” on an aging brain. The key word is may. The word appears again in the article a few paragraphs later. Michael
Downey, who wrote the article, suggests that walnuts “may have a beneficial
effect in reducing the risk, delay the onset of, or preventing” Alzheimer’s disease.

My advice: If you like walnuts, and you can afford to buy
them regularly—I just picked up a pound bag still in their shells at my
discount supermarket for $4.50—eat them plentifully. But don’t expect miracles.

In a separate article, Downey touted the B1 vitamin benfotiamine.

“When benfotiamine was used for treatment for eight weeks
in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease, researchers found that it reduced both
amyloid plaque numbers and phosphorylated tau protein levels in the brain,” Downey
wrote. Backing up this assertion is a 2013 paper in the journal Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience, noting
that “Thiamine-dependent processes are highly correlated to the decline in
clinical dementia rating scales. In animal models, thiamine deficiency
exacerbates plaque formation, promotes phosphorylation of tau and impairs
memory.” (Phosphorylation can turn protein enzymes on and off, altering their
function.)

The paper goes on to note that related mechanisms “may
lead to reversal of plaque formations in animals. If so, the use of benfotiamine
could provide a safe intervention to reverse biological and clinical processes”
related to Alzheimer’s.

As I was reading this article, my mind drifted to Ernest
Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises,
about a group of expat Americans and Britons in Paris and Spain in the 1920s. The
book’s narrator, Jake Barnes, has been rendered impotent by a war wound. Jake is
in love with Brett Ashley, and Brett with him, but consummation is not possible.
On the surface, the expatriate life is gay (in the now-defunct sense of the
word). But several of the characters are miserable. Jake finds respite from his
anguish in fishing in Spain, but he also drinks heavily and teeters on the edge
of despair. The novel begins as it ends, with Jake and Brett in a taxi, discussing
their plight.

“Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned
good time together.”